JEWISIPI E
Flight and
Panic—Our
Grave Problem
Editorial, Page 4
CD
`Transition
Years'
t)y Dr. Israel
Goldstein
Review, Page 4
Vol. XLI I, No. 9
1=2 C D 1 T
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Russia Sentences 6 Jews
to Death by Firing Squad
Warsaw--Aftermath of
Holocaust; Depressing
Realities of New Era.
By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
WARSAW, Poland.—There were hundreds of Jewish com-
munities in Poland in pre-war days. More than 3,500,000 Jews
formed the great collective community that took pride in many
yeshivoth, in a progressive Jewish school system out of which
emerged noted Hebrew scholars.
Today, there are 22 small Jewish communities left. They
are listed in the luakh—the Jewish calendar that is freely dis-
tributed by the religious Jewish community in Warsaw—in
order to advise their congregants on the licht benshen—the
time for the lighting of the candles on Sabbath eve—in the
respective kehilloth, these 22 surviving Jewish communities.
This luakh is in itself a symbol of the difference that exists
between the Communist state of Poland and Soviet Russia.
In the USSR, it has been stated time and again, Jews crave for
prayerbooks, calendars to advise them on the occurrence of
holidays, taleisim (prayershawls) and tefillin (phyllacteries).
Many visitors must have taken heed of such purported re-
quests. As a result, due undoubtedly to pressure, only a few
days before the last Rosh Hashanah, Chief Rabbi Yehudah
Levin of Moscow issued a formal protest against such impor-
tations, charging visitors who had brought with them such
religious articles with having brought about a black market
in religious objects.
Poland's comparative "religious freedom" becomes appar-
ent in the free distribution of the luakh. The "religious free-
dom" may well be part of the libertarian principle applied to
the Catholic church in Poland whose influence over the people
is so great and whose dignitaries have been granted great free-
doms. But insofar as the Polish government is concerned it is
equally apparent that the principles pursued are those of
"render unto Caesar what is Caesar's . . . " and give the
church its unrestricted sway over its worshipers—up to the
point of not permitting it ever to gain a political foothold.
So—if the church has the freedoms granted it, what harm
is it to give the impoverished, the dwindled Jewish community,
a luakh and religious rights?
This is, indeed, the dwindled Jewish community. This is
where Hitler achieved his goal of the near-total extermination
of the Jewish people. It is mostly in the crematoria that were
established in Poland that the Nazis murdered three million
Continued on Page 32.
Direct JTA Teletype Wire to The Jewish News
LONDON — A Chernovitz court has sentenced six Jews to death
and given prison terms to nine others on charge of speculation in gold
and foreign currency, according to reports received here Wednesday from
Moscow.
Sentencing followed conviction after a two-week trial, according
to the Soviet Ukrainian newspaper Pravda Ukrainy, which had noted that
many of the 150,000 Jews of Chernovitz have relatives abroad.
All personal property of the 15 defendants was ordered confiscated.
The six sentenced to die will be executed by shooting.
The indictment charged that 55 pounds of gold ingots, diamonds
and foreign currency was found in possession of members of the al-
leged ring. One of the defendants was an 81-year-old man, Alter
Bronstein, who was accused of currency dealings amounting to more
than $100,000. He was one of the six sentenced to death. The other
five were listed as Yefim Margoskes, Moishe Meyer, Zayats Srul
Zimilevich, Isaak Ronis and Felika Mester.
Those sentenced to varying prison terms were Hersh Shternberg,
Esther Weinbern, Enzel Koifman, Samuil Levental, Mendel Flomenboim,
Hersh Nagel, Leonid Sherman and Yankel Kohen. The name of the 15th
defendant was not publicized.
The indictment accused the defendants of having had contacts in
Moscow, Lvov, Kiev, Kishinev, Minsk and Brest, all cities with large
Jewish populations. Chernovitz is a city in the Bukovina which was an-
nexed to the Soviet Ukraine after World War II.
Probe of Soviet Anti-Semitism Urged at United Nations
UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., (JTA) — A formal request for a
"relentless" United Nations investigation of "government-instigated
anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union" was filed here by the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions, an organization which has con-
sultative status before the Economic and Social Council. • As a group
with such status, the ICFTU has a voice, but not a note, in matters
dealing with economic and social affairs around the world.
In filing the request, backed by a 5,000-word memorandum, Irving
Brown, ICFTU representative here, attacked the "ever-expanding program
of Soviet anti-Semitism" which, he declared, is "aided, abetted, encouraged
and legalized by the, Soviet government." He chargd that the USSR "is
engaged in a program against a large, defenseless minority of its citizenry
which can only be characterized as cultural and spiritual genocide."
Brown requested that the United Nations Social Commission order
the investigation of official, Soviet anti-Semitism and stated that, if none
of the 18 members of the Social Commission introduces a resolution
calling for the probe, the ICFTU would take the matter directly to the
Commission's parent body—the Economic and Social Council. The United
States is a member of the 18-nation body.
"Our submission," he declared, "is one which should lead to
an uncompromising, relentless investigation, the repressions by the
Soviet Union of the rights, guaranteed by the UN Charter, of all men
Continued on Page 2
Krakow Story-ENNA Commun i0 T Doomed
.
By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
KRAKOW, Poland.—Dating back to the year 1304, there was a
Judengasse in this former capital both of Galicia and of Poland. The
Krakow community and its immediate environs had grown to a
population exceeding 60,000, and some quoted the figure of 80,000,.
just before the last war.
Today, there are 2,000 people left here-1,300 of them of the
ages of 60 to 65 and older. There are only 10 children in the religious
school. It is a dying community and the squalor that is in evidence
here is most depressing.
There will be a constant flow of visitors here because Oswiecim
(Auschwitz) and Birkenau are 40 miles from here—and to the credit
of the Polish government let it be said that it is retaining as imper-
ishable memorials the concentration and extermination camps that
were set up by the Nazis and were used by them as assembly places
not only for Polish Jews but for all Jews from all-European countries
who were marked for extermination.
It is not with the death camps that we are now concerned with.
Anyone who has read current history is acquainted with them. The
living are the objects of concern. Their lives are bitter, the religious
element is dwindling, the youth among the so-called "cultural" group
are abandoning their people, and few have a desire to go to Israel.
The dedicated group that sought freedom as Jews has already gone
to Israel, and a very small percentage of the remaining will seek
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So—as in Warsaw—Krakow's story is depressing.
But it is even more depressing in Krakow than it is in Warsaw,
and the nearness of Oswiecim - Birkenau has not helped to arouse
greater loyalties to Jewry and to Judaism among the Jews there.
In Krakow one sees evidence of the available rights to religious
observance. There are outdoor shrines, and your correspondent was
witness, on the early morning. of the day of the visit to Krakow, of
passersby kneeling before the shrine and depositing coins for the
church.
•
There is no doubt that • such rights to freedom of religious
observance are available also for Jews. The proof is to be found in
the announced plans for the establishment, with government and
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee assistance, of a Jewish
Home for the Aged in Warsaw. The 'plans are to have a synagogue
in that home and a kosher kitchen with a mashgiach,— a supervisor
for kashrut. That being the case, it is evident that religion is not
suppressed in Poland—that where it has declined it is voluntarily
abandoned by the members of the Jewish community.
Near the Catholic shrine referred . to is a Russian memorial to
heroes of the last war. A number of graves of former USSR generals
are in that memorial area,. and the Russian inscription over one of
the graves lists General R.ogov. It seemed to be evidence of the
admitted large participation of Jews in the anti-Nazi armies and the
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